UIM profits selling $20.5m Mount Waverley investment after two years

By Marc Pallisco

A Paragon Financial Group investment arm, United Investment Management, has sold a Mount Waverley office for $20.5 million – a substantial rise on the $16 million price it paid in mid-2015.

At 17-21 Hardner Road, the 6412 square metre complex on a 7145sq m block backing onto the Monash Freeway near the Foster Road on-ramp, is fully leased to ASX-listed apparel company PAS Group, which pays annual rent of $1.4 million.

For sale: the former police station in Carlton, which was closed in 2010.Credit:Jellis Craig

PAS Group retails brands including Black Pepper, Review, Dunlop and Everlast. It also controls more than 250 stores nationally and an online business, which in the 2016 financial year reported 39 per cent growth, equating to more than 11 per cent of the company's bottom line.

Last year PAS Group sold the Metalicus​ label to General Pants Group. In 2015 the company was the subject of an $86 million takeover bid by its biggest shareholder, US hedge fund Coliseum Capital Management.

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United Investment Management has sold an office for $20.5 million at 17-21 Hardner Road, Mount Waverley.

Its Mount Waverley headquarters was a dilapidated industrial facility prior to 2010, before being gutted and refurbished into a high-quality triple-storey office.

Colliers International's Peter Bremner, David Minton and Justin Fried sold the property, about 16 kilometres south-east of the CBD, to a local private investor. Despite a lease, the building was marketed for its potential to be subdivided into multiple tenancies.

Three years ago UIM sold Moonee Ponds' three-storey Junction Club to a Chinese developer for $10.7 million, a rise on the $8.4 million it paid in 2011.

A high-profile inner north property is, for the first time, controlled by a private citizen and will be converted into a prestige home.

The ex-Carlton Police Station site, developed in 1878 at 334-344 Drummond Street, is speculated to be selling for well over $4 million – representing a short-term capital gain for the vendor, Sydney-based school Education Development Association, which paid $3.6 million for it in mid-2014.

EDA, which occupies a nearby Carlton property, was expected to refit the complex into a school, but offered the property for sale in May in the same unrenovated state it bought it.

On a 992sq m block with eight car spaces, the holding includes a low rise administration office beside a six-cell bluestone jailhouse which is said to have accommodated notorious 1920s gangland figure Squizzy Taylor and later, members of the Carlton Crew.

The state government sold the property in 2013 after shutting it as a police station three years earlier, ending an era of more than 130 years.

Jellis Craig agent Simon Shrimpton marketed the asset on both occasions. He said the incoming owners from Melbourne's eastern suburbs, who plan to renovate the heritage property, outbid other prestige buyers and developers.

Merlin Entertainments to sell alpine portfolio

One of the world's most famous companies – Merlin Entertainments – is readying to sell an alpine property portfolio in central Mount Hotham.

The 21 development sites have reserves as low as $100,000 and will be offered with attractive terms of sale including a 5 per cent discount on the auction purchase price for buyers who settle in less than 60 days.

Long settlements and financiers offering low borrowing rates are also set to be offered at the auction being organised by John Castran, of Castran Alpine, in August. The same agent was behind a successful off-the-plan sell-down in Glen Waverley in 2015, where – anticipating demand – prospective purchasers had to pay a $2500 fee for access into the display suite.

Merlin Entertainments, listed on the London Stock Exchange, is reportedly the second biggest visitor attraction operator in the world after Disney. Last year, a retreat Merlin Entertainments occupies in another alpine region, Dinner Plain, sold to a Singaporean investor for $4.8 million, who plans to convert it into a cancer clinic.

Surrey Hills site sells

A developer is paying a speculated $9 million for a permit-ready mixed-use development site in Surrey Hills, about 11 kilometres east of the CBD. The 352-358 Canterbury Road property covers 2553sq m and backs on to Surrey Gardens, near the Union Road retail village and Surrey Hills train station.

Colliers International's Hamish Burgess, Ben Baines and Bryson Cameron marketed the asset with a permit for 17 townhouses, 12 apartments and five retail or commercial spaces.

Cadence buys Abbotsford site on six-day settlement

In an unusual deal with just a six-day settlement, Charlie Buxton's Cadence Property is paying $10.5 million for an Abbotsford holding across the road from the Yarra River.

Bucking a trend in which many industrial properties in the area are replaced with apartment complexes – 18 Victoria Crescent is expected to be replaced with an office, possibly rising more than six levels, given recent planning precedents in the area.

The asset was offered by Spotless Group with a leaseback or vacant possession.

CBRE's Sandro Peluso, David Minty, Julian White and Guy Naselli only recently listed the asset, which was for sale with another agency for more than a year before being withdrawn in 2016.

Buxton – a CBRE industrial sales agent for two years until the end of 2013 – is the son and nephew of Andrew and Michael Buxton, founders of prominent builder MAB Corporation.

Control of one of Australia's most revered horse-racing studs has passed from one racing veteran to another following a $7.2 million deal.

Robert Crabtree – who recently sold Dorrington Farm near Hastings – is the mystery purchaser of Nagambie's Wood Nook estate, which was offered by retired Moonee Valley chairman Bob Scarborough, after more than 20 years of ownership.

Mr Crabtree, who got his first taste of group 1 racing in 1983, and once owned Black Caviar's maternal grandmother, is still enjoying on-track success, running Catchy, the daughter of Fastnet Rock, at Caulfield's Blue Diamond Stakes this year.

The Wood Nook estate covers 122 hectares with a kilometre of direct frontage to the Goulburn River and includes an 1870 homestead and separate manager's cottage, built a decade later.